(In each of the lion’s eyes, ears, limbs, joints, and in each and every hair, the golden lion. All the lions embraced by the single hairs simultaneously and instantaneously enter a single hair. Thus in each and every hair are an infinite number of lions, and in addition all the single hairs, together with their infinite number of lions, in turn enter into a single hair)

[Note: Source: most of the poems in Steve Mitchell’s MS My Southwest, taken mostly in order; except for the bits in parentheses, which are mine; Rachel Blau DuPlessis, “Draft X: Letters”, in Drafts 1-38, Peter Marshall, Nature’s Web: Rethinking Our Place on Earth]

14.10.2007

[Note: Sources: Louis Althusser, The Future Lasts Forever (tr. Richard Veasey), and René Char (a filthy light is a phrase I found and lost that occurs in a poem collected in This Smoke That Carried Us (tr. Susan Dubroff)]

To replace the fluids you are losing and to ensure your bowel will be clean for the examination or procedure

Watching 10,000 flatbed trucks

1,000 tanks and 20,000 Humvees

Among other vehicles

Drive by at 30 mph would take 75 days

They’re warming up the Trailblazer

“An orderly and safe withdrawal is best achieved over a 10- to 12-month period”

“An invasion in reverse”

I was in one of those forests the sun can’t reach but which the stars at night penetrate for the purpose of relentless hostilities

The weight of the grape alters the position of the leaves

The mountains had slipped a little

But without disengaging the epoch

Chill this product in refrigerator to improve the taste

Do not freeze

And yet

Out of control

After a year of use in Iraq's desert climate

The Army's 70-ton M1A2 tank morphs from an awesome fighting machine to a repair nightmare as sand infiltrates everything down to electronics

5 mg in each 45-mL bottle

10 mg in each suppository

And yet

As I was I-hate-speeching when I so rudely interrupted myself

Perhaps it is among the wavering bits of music

The clang of percussion cutting through any discernible melody

The panda in the audience

“The blood so much

You know

It runs in rivers

It dries up too

It cakes all over me … ”

That rays of light bend the whole of landscape in some nameless seed growing over the course of several millennia into the hardened stuff of history

[Note: Sources: Arnaud de Borchgrave , “Iraq exit logistics”, Washington Times article, 6 October 2007, as quoted by Tom Raworth, 7 October 2007; a Fleet Prep Kit 1 box; the Trailblazer: the big roto-rooter, dubbed thus by my cousin Nick; René Char, “Penumbra” and “Migration” (tr. Susan Dubroff), in This Smoke That Carries Us: Selected Poems; Noah Eli Gordon, Novel Pictorial Noise; postcard from Kezier Thousand-Buddha Cave, in the far west of China, from Sam Bloomberg-Rissman; “I hate speech” is of course, Robert Grenier; for a photo of the panda in the audience, see Silliman’s Blog, 9 October 2007; Davison Budhoo, “Open Letter of Resignation to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund,” as found at Naomi Klein.org]

[Note: Sources: Rosemarie Dimatteo, on Allison Cortson’s exhibition “Collecting Dust”, Galerie Michael Janssen, 2 – 30 June 2006, as found at Art-Agenda.com; James Trainor, “David Rathman: These Could Be the Good Old Days”, in David Rathman: Clementine Gallery (“Fine … them” is attributed to Jonathan Swift); the biotopes are the creation of Eduardo Kac, and reference is to his “Specimen of Secrecy About Marvelous Discoveries” show at FRINGE exhibitions, September 8 - October 6, 2007, and JBR]